Rebel Justice

100. The Mental Health Crisis in the English & Welsh Criminal Justice System is Driving Barristers Barmy! (Part 1)

• Rebel Justice - The View Magazine • Episode 100

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Justice feels distant until it isn’t. We open the doors to a courtroom few ever truly see, where trauma arrives with every case and formality—the wig, the gown, the ritual—exists to contain it. With barrister Kate Kelleher and Criminal Bar Association communications lead James Rossiter, we explore how lawyers hold the line between empathy and evidence while facing impossible timelines and rising complexity.

Across candid stories and sharp analysis, we examine why language matters—why “victim” becomes “complainant” until a verdict—and what that means for fairness. We look at fitness-to-plead, the spillover from a strained mental health system, and the human toll of trials drifting into 2027 and even 2029. 
We also tackle prevention. School exclusions that push children to the streets, social media that rewards impulse, and the loss of everyday boundaries mean too many meet their first real limit in court. Amid that, barristers carry years of detail, reheated at each review, with little time to build trust with clients. Victim personal statements can validate pain but seldom change sentences, revealing the emotional and legal limits woven through modern justice. This conversation is clear-eyed, humane, and grounded in lived practice.

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Credits

Guest: Kate Kalleher & James Rossiter

Producer: Charlotte Janes & Nico Rivosecchi

Soundtrack: Particles (Revo Main Version) by [Coma-Media] 

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Host:

You're listening to Rebel Justice, the podcast from The View magazine. When we think about justice, we think about it as an abstract. Something that happens to someone else, somewhere else. But justice and the law regulate every aspect of our interactions with each other, with organisations, and with the government. We never think about it until it impacts our lives or those of someone close. Unless a women with lived experience of the justice system, whether as victims are women who have limited crimes, people at the forefront of civic action who put their lives on the mind to manage a blessing well. We ask them to share their insight into how we might repel a broken and harmful system with humanity and still. We also speak with people who are in the heart of the justice system. In this couple series, we're looking at the reality. James Rossiter is the Director of Communications at the Criminal Bar Association. He began his career as a journalist before moving into communications within the justice sector, where he's worked to bridge the gap between the public, policymakers, and those working in the courts. James is passionate about making the language and realities of criminal law more accessible and about showing the humanity behind the wigs and gowns. Together, we'll explore how trauma manifests in the courtroom for defendants, for victims, and complainants, and for the lawyers who hold the system together. Thank you both for being with us today. Could I get you to introduce yourselves and tell our listeners a little bit about your background and your work?

Kate Kelleher:

Thank you. My name is Katherine Kelleher, and I am a barrister at the 36 Group specialising in criminal defence law and I also do environmental crime.

James Rossiter:

Hello, I'm James Rossiter, the grand title of Director of Communications of the Criminal Bar Association, which means I try to make things simple. Let's see if that works.

Host:

Thank you. So in this episode, we're going to kind of focus on trauma in the criminal justice system. Obviously, we understand that being in the criminal justice system, there is already a base level of trauma. How would you begin to describe how that manifests at various points throughout the court system?

Kate Kelleher:

Well, I think that the minute you mention the word court, there's a trauma involved because nobody goes to court willingly for whatever reason. It's because there is a perceived wrong or there is a perceived crime or somebody has been accused of a crime. And regardless of whether you are for the prosecution or the defence dealing with it from the criminal side, people are traumatized. People who believe themselves to be innocent and wrongly accused are traumatized by the shame attached to such an accusation. And people who have been injured or have been wronged also perceive there is an element of the victim, but they also see that they may have done something wrong to bring this on themselves. And so I think that the minute somebody mentions the word court, there is an automatic trauma. And I know that you have approached that in your question, but I think that it is everybody and everybody, regardless of which side of the pros for the prosecution or the defence that they are entering a courtroom, there is a trauma attached. It's to what level we then as a society say, Oh, you have been traumatized by this event because, and I think James, you would agree with this, that the word trauma is very, very it's loaded.

James Rossiter:

It's loaded. And we were discussing this earlier, weren't we, Kate, that I know clients suddenly refer to you, Katherine, as Kate. So let's we're saying with Kate that it's such a loaded word, and there lies the tension that there might have been something traumatic, an event. It might trigger that classic word memories of that when you have to relive it and give evidence. But the job of the barrister, the criminal, the specialist criminal barrister in court, you know, wearing that wig, it is an image of independence, not associated with the case or the person or the cause, and trying to examine forensically the evidence so that someone independent can make a decision whether the evidence applies to the law of which you know, which applies for the fence that the CBS is charging. It's a long way of saying it's the job of the criminal barrister to somehow stop that tennis ball of trauma running around and deal with the evidence.

Kate Kelleher:

That's right, because some years ago there was a um there was a survey done as to whether or not people, the public generally wanted barristers no longer to wear the wigs and gowns because the wig has always been associated with anonymity, the anonymity of the person presenting the case or representing the person. And the public uh resoundedly said no, they wanted the wig and the gown to remain for the exact purpose of that it there was a solemnity to the proceedings and also an anonymity that people presented the case fairly and without prejudice on either side. And so, yeah, uh James is right, there is a lot to entering that courtroom and putting on the wig and gown. I mean, some years ago, many years ago now, the childminder rang in sick, uh, and my son was on half term. And I had to take him to court because my voice is so deep. At court, they thought that a male barrister was turning up with their child. So they had all of these things put in place for the male barrister and their child. I walk in and they go, Oh, right, you can take your son into the female roping room. But even my son, who knew what I did and everything, once I'd actually gowned up and was wearing the wig and gown and everything, I will always remember him looking at me going, Where's my mum?

James Rossiter:

You know. And that's it's a success in a strange way, isn't it? Because that means, you know, you are doing your job, not as a he or she, but as the word. I mean, Kate introduced it, a barrister there to be that independent, forensic person and in our terrible word, but it's an important word, adversarial system. So that we are in a court, we're not in a hospital, we're not in a therapy room. We, although people will may seek some sort of cathartic resolution, it's a mistake to think that's the place, the forum to go for it. That's in fact, that might not be helpful for a decision that is just.

Kate Kelleher:

Absolutely, absolutely, and it and that's what concerns me, that there is so much about trauma in the courtroom and people being traumatized now by a system which has been in existence for over 800 years. It has always been like that, you know, and have a look at one of the episodes of Poldar, where he was charged and tried for murder in the same day. Nobody had a chance to look at the evidence, nobody had a chance to rethink what was happening or otherwise. But yet, one of the big things about it is what happened all those years ago before law reports or any of the digitalization of the court system now was barristers spoke to each other, they talked to each other, and they got through their trauma of what they had listened to in the day by dining with each other. Yes. Thankfully, within the inns, you still can't get called to the bar finally unless and until you've dined with other barristers 12 nights in your final.

James Rossiter:

And it sounds so quaint, and in a way, with we were talking about this. We could do with a bit more human interaction in our it feels like 25-hour working days to digest the the clear emotional complexity that that is that is transferred into us and through us as we deliver and discuss the evidence. Again, there's pressures on there for us to be the barrister, but there is behind that wig when you take it off and go home, there is the mother, the father, the brother, the sister. Exactly.

Kate Kelleher:

And there is the friend who needs to be able to pick up the phone to another barrister to hear about their trauma, about what has happened. And so we see a lot dealing just with barristers at the moment. We see a lot now with the um with the Harman report about bullying, harassment, everything. And that is, to a certain level, judges and other barristers transferring their trauma about what they're going through onto other people. And we say, oh no, that can't happen anymore. Because people don't apologize anymore. They don't say sorry, even when they bump into you on the street now, there's no level of decency or apology. Um, there is that trauma wherever you look at it and however you deal with it. So it is the whole point of at what point are we losing our decency towards people and what people are going through. And we can't have a system that is designed to make it all good for the victim or the complainant, so that it what they go through, and which is a trauma, of reliving the event that they have complained about, and somebody has said, actually, I'm not guilty. And I think at this moment in time it is good to remember that there in most crimes there are two elements. One is the actus race and one is the men's rail. So somebody may have stabbed you, but whether or not they meant to, is a a whole other issue. And so when somebody says, Well, you know, it was caught on TV and they're still pleading not guilty, what's going on here? Is they may say I didn't mean to.

James Rossiter:

And isn't we pause there because we we gloss over it, but it's such an important word. For barristers in court, we don't talk about victim until there is a uh a plea of guilt or a conviction. The the CPS, the police will talk about um victims. Increasingly, unfortunately, the MOJ will talk about victims when they perhaps should be talking about defendants and the accused, and that's the difference between police and prosecution and the justice system. We talk about witnesses and complainants, yes, and yet, of course, it is important that we acknowledge through the justice system there are two people that run in parallel through that system. There's the accused, there is the complainant who may or may not have been a victim of crime, they may physically have received that blow. Yes. And so people automatically think, well, there's a they're a victim, but uh from a justice point of view, without that intent, and that's what we argue about, but we are we are aware, aren't we? We they run in parallel through the system, but ultimately it's not the complainant who uh the jury is deciding, are they guilty of the crime? They're deciding whether they're a credible complainant. Exactly.

Kate Kelleher:

And that's an issue, uh, when we Well, that is the bottom line, really, isn't it? It's the credibility of the whole system is being called into question at the moment, not least because we see so many more mental health cases where the person who has mental health issues is part of the criminal justice system because there are no more beds for them in hospitals, there is no place to put them, there are very few medium secure units. Some people may not need the Luton Ward at Broadmoor Hospital, which, by the way, for listeners, the Luton Ward is the most secure wing at Broadmoor Hospital for those very sick, very ill people. And so what they do with those people in the criminal justice system is they put them through the what's called an actus reus hearing. And that is the person is unfit to plead through mental illness, and then the jury have to find whether they did the act or not. I mean, many years ago I represented somebody who was accused of attempted matricide of trying to kill his mother, and yet when we dug deep, one of the six psychiatric reports on him trying to release him from a unit said he will cope in society if he does not live with his mother. So they released him to the care of his father and his stepmother, who after three weeks had had enough of his issues, and so he quietly went back to live with his mother, where after two weeks he tried to kill her. Now, that of itself was a very interesting hearing because none of the psychiatrists who had previously opined on him attended court, just the one psychiatrist for the defense, because the prosecution had accepted all of the defense psychiatric reports. And we lost most of the first day with getting uh uh emails and telephone calls and otherwise from those six psychiatrists to say that they agreed with the defense reports. There was no issue between them. This was a very ill young man with a lot of problems, but no hospital bed. And so we went to court to find out whether he did this act or not, and he could be found guilty of attempted murder. And of course, he wasn't found guilty of attempted murder. The jury found that he had done the act complained of and then sent back to hospital under a court order, where in fact, if there hadn't been pressure on the mental health system in the first place, they would never have released him.

James Rossiter:

And isn't this a bigger point we've we've been discussing here? You can see how Kate's been focusing on a defendant here.

Kate Kelleher:

Yeah.

James Rossiter:

Is that contrary to what we see for years through our TV, our novels, that there is a Sherlock Holmes scheming criminal uh and there's a good and a baddie. That's not the case in court. People bring so much trauma from the side of the accused, complainants often we find in a lot of domestic violence cases they're codependent. They're living in a at a often so many of these have alcohol and increasingly drugs involved from both parties. Yes. We have to the jury has to work out was the crime their crime committed or not, when there's a lot of complex trauma uh brought to these messy situations, and that puts even more pressure on the criminal barrister to work out what is relevant for the the jury or not. As you say, Kate, even before whether someone's fit enough to stand. I think the we underestimate the impact of mental health on the system. Oh, hugely so.

Kate Kelleher:

We underestimate the impact and the cost to the criminal justice system of mentally ill patients being put through the criminal justice system, and a lot of them don't understand it, they do not get it. I remember representing a woman and talking to her and going through everything with her, and then we had to go through a whole situation again where the psychiatrist came in to double check that everything was okay. And I will always remember, I don't remember the name of the psychiatrist because she came from the mental health unit. But I do remember her saying to me, I really admire you for your persistence in continuing to explain the procedure and what would happen to her. And I said, What do you mean? She said, You do realise she understood none of it, will take none of it in. But you have persisted, and I really admire your patience and your willingness to sit with her. So I went back in again because that was as good as telling me that I hadn't done my job properly, my client didn't have a clue. So I went back in. But about four or five years ago, maybe this was six years ago, this case, but about four or five years ago, at Christmas one year, I got an email out of the blue from this woman saying, I do remember you, and I'm sorry I didn't realise that I was so ill, but I want you to know that I'm doing okay now. You know, and I keep those type of emails and those little thank you cards that I get from people, you know, saying saying thank you years later. But I do always remember that.

James Rossiter:

And it's often the from the defense, isn't it?

Kate Kelleher:

Always from the defense. Always. You know, and I remember one woman um and her trauma. I can't even begin to tell you about her trauma. Quite interestingly, I was instructed to to represent her and to enter a plea because she had facilitated unlawful immigration. British Customs were accusing her of handing over a false passport for her Jamaican husband. And I looked at the case and I said to the solicitor, who's very bright, I would want him if I was in trouble. And I said to him, This is a not guilty plea. She has the defense of marital coercion at a time when it still existed. And he said, I'm not accepting that. Plead her out. She's got three young kids, she needs to go home. The husband has been deported to Jamaica, etc. So I said, I am not pleading a woman that I think has a legal defense. And he said, Okay, he said, I'm going to deal with her first when we get to court in the morning. So we got to court in the morning. He asked her a couple of questions, and she just looked at him and said, Uh oh, I wouldn't have dared in answer to some question. And I remember that he sat back and he said, Right, Kate's going to talk to you about your defense. And so we went through that trial of her defense of marital coercion. And what was beautiful about marital coercion for women, in particular female defendants, in trauma in the courtroom, is that marital coercion did not have to be violent, it was a moral pressure brought to bear. And what had happened with this woman is that she had met this man here in the UK. She had one child of her own, and she had married him, and he got deported, and she went to live with him in Jamaica. And they had two further children. They were so poor in Jamaica that they had to wait for their neighbors to finish their meals to see if there was any food available for the children. She couldn't afford to pay for the school bus to send them to school, and so she was trying to cope with three children on her own. Eventually, she confessed this to her mother, who here in the UK, who got together with relatives and offered her the play fare for herself and her three children. She told him she was returning to the UK, and he said, That's fine. You can go to the UK with your child, but you're not going with mine. And therein was the question, and I do remember closing the case for the defense on and using the film, Sophie's Choice, as an example, because that was her choice. That was her moral force to bear. Did she or did she not leave her children? Or would she leave her children with this man who had done and did nothing, made no effort? He then did get a job and got some work and he saved the money. But the first thing he did was rather than give them a life in Jamaica, was he saved and got a false passport. And in the situation with the defence, uh, you have to admit the offense in order to raise the defense of marital coercion. So she had to admit she had done it. One of the customs officers at the time said that she handed over the passport. And she said, I must have. But the three children hadn't slept, they were completely hyper, which was quite interesting because the customs officer also did give that evidence that the children were now on feral running around the terminal, having gotten off the flight from Jamaica. He was detained, she was knackered, she didn't know, and she said, if the officer said I did, hand over the passport, then I must have. Because she didn't remember. Sleep deprived, three lively children off a plane, Jamaica. And the the prosecution tried to get the defence withdrawn from the jury because of that. And ironically, I relied on the case of Kelleher, my surname, which I had forgotten. And that was the guy who criminally damaged the statue of Margaret Thatcher all those years ago, and he raised the defence of necessity, that he couldn't consciously allow his children to grow up in a society where a statue of this woman existed and so would lead his children to believe she was revered, which I always thought was, you know, quite um a stand to take. But uh the Court of Appeal ruled that regardless of how ridiculous your defence was, if it was a factual defence, you were entitled for it to be heard before the jury. Um that woman was acquitted unanimously. I was so delighted for her. But I remember her walking away from me, and then I rang the solicitor to give him the result, and then she walked back. And she looked at me and she said, I just want to say thank you. We will never meet again. Yeah, and that was hugely emotional for me, because I do say to people when they leave the courtroom or they get a suspended sentence or they're acquitted, I say, you know, with the best will in the world, I hope we never meet again. But you know where I am if you need me. And so, but for her to look at me, and I remember, just to finish that story, I remember feeling very tense with that answer she gave in the courtroom before the jury. And I said to her, How many nights have you spent away from your children? And I remember the impact because she looked at me as if I'd asked her to describe the colour orange. And she just looked at me and she said, None. Not one single night. Because they had released her on bail, they'd sent her away with the three children. The poor customs officers didn't know what they were going to do with three over excited children, where they were just about to deport the father and arrest the mother. So they released her on bail, where she had moved back home, moved in with her mother, and was raising her three children. And she was travelling from South West England to southwest London every day, getting up at five o'clock in the morning, getting back at eight o'clock at night, but she was not leaving her children.

James Rossiter:

And you've just three things that come to mind as you say that one, I bet, Kate, you've not told that tale, this true story in such detail ever. Ever. So here we are, six years on, yeah. It's stuck in her memory every single hour, almost to the smallest detail, as if you're in front of the jury again, reliving that. There's something cathartic, perhaps. I'm listening to it as you say, we may not have had the chance to hear that. The other thing, the humanity of what she did there, that's a complex defence, as she said, a defence that however absurd your belief if is it factual that you had to do X because you believed in Y. This was my you know defacing Margaret, that just thing. That would have come across to a jury, everyone couldn't relate to feeling uh then it has to be a mother or a father, but being overworked, overtired, and loving their kids. So the humanity there, and uh I uh the other thing that it just struck me, I I you said I don't want to see you again. Just a year ago, no, uh 18 months ago, I sat outside the old Bailey to meet uh I hope she won't mind me saying it, Tanya Acker KC, our one of our former chairs. She just defended, she there was a multi-handed, many, then otherwise, many defendants in a gang case, a terrible case, a tragedy. Someone had been killed, stabbing, and it happens all the time. Something that just doesn't make the news. It used to make news of Damola Taylor, but it has to be you know really grim. Conventional death. And one of her young men had got out of court and they uh had been acquitted, thank goodness for for for him and his family, and they were whooping outside, and she said, Just a minute, James, and she went over and said, Well done. I really hope you'll take this as a big lesson. I just don't want to see you again. And she she pulled him apart from her his friends and said, And just think about the company you keep. And he suddenly went silent, and maybe the penny dropped about the company, this young man in the face of death of somebody else. Yeah, you know, because it wasn't real for them until the real and maybe it wasn't real because they never had to see that the deceased body later. The reality would have hit him hard in that going back to that formality in that cold place of a court. And that's why I think the public going back to that point want to see that. Everybody wants to see that formality, and there's a containing aspect, isn't there? When we're wearing the wig, the gown, and sobering as well.

Kate Kelleher:

Sobering. Because I talking of Tana, a lovely woman, very bright, and uh spent a lovely night over three cocktails with her when we finished the last case that I've just done, where I was led by a different silk, but talking about the trauma in the courtroom was Tana's client um uh was there, but I had to deal with my client who had just been convicted of murder. And the security at the Bailey is such now that we cannot see the defendant's family inside the building. So we have to give them our mobile number or we have to connect through the solicitor, and because of the cuts in the criminal justice system, the solicitors don't have time to come to court every day. So we have to almost anticipate when a jury will return a verdict if we want a solicitor there with us to deal with adverse verdicts or whatever. But we had to see the mother outside the Bailey on the street, and she was Because there's no room inside the Bailey or security reasons and both no room on the So this is you meeting the mother of a defendant. Yes.

James Rossiter:

In a street that's busy with a defendant that may or may not be going to prison.

Kate Kelleher:

Yes. And the family. And it was me and my leader. And I remember he had just been convicted. We were advising her on the likely sentence. It was murder. He had just turned eighteen during the course of the proceedings. So he's going so there's no no youth justice going to be Well, there there isn't there wasn't. But in the situation of the conviction and dealing with the likely sentence, this kid had had a troubled teenage time and he had been subject to an electronically monitored tag or curfew. So he had been at home, but the having to be there every night and everything. And the mother was dealing with the conviction, and she was with her sister out on the street, and she kept asking night and day. Night and day. It was a question, night and day, night and day. And I then realized that what she was asking was, was the potential sentence of 27 years going to be night and day? What she was asking was, was there going to be any release on electronically monitored curfew or tag or anything for her 18-year-old son? And I remember looking at her saying, No, uh yes, it is going to be night and day. It will be a long time before he is considered for a tag or for release or anything. And in that moment, when it dawned on her, she collapsed against the wall of the Bailey. There was no place for her to sit down. Her sister was holding her up, and the tears just rolled. And so, as much as we look at the trauma for the complainant or the victim, if there is a conviction, we forget to look at the trauma to the defendant's family, to those people that usually are very good, very hardworking people. For whatever reason, something has gone awry or something has gone astray. But I do always think, and I I I do totally agree with him, that one of the big points for young people that ever introduce them into the criminal justice system is the willingness of schools to exclude young people because then they're set out onto the streets. And they are easy pickings for criminals, for gangs and otherwise. And I think that one of the things that we really do need to look at if we are looking at a criminal justice system that we could stop the trauma, that people say, Oh, I feel afraid walking down the road, there are these gangs of kids and stuff, is stop excluding them. Start with a more stern attitude to education, because I do also think that one of the most important lessons to be taken out of that Netflix series Adolescence, which was aired earlier in the year, which for me hardened 25 years defending, I realized I needed translation on street talk and emojis. But was Stephen Graham interviewed afterwards about his part in that and the making of adolescence and otherwise? And I thought we should not lose sight of the fact that he said in our day and age, when we were younger, when we were sent to our rooms, we were sent on our own to reflect about what we had done, what had happened, and why we were being sent to our room and why we were being granted. Nowadays, parents send children to their rooms and the rest of the world is up there waiting for them, on their phone, on their computer, or otherwise. And then also as well, we forget that we will write on a text what we would never say to somebody.

James Rossiter:

And and look, our day jobs, I mean, obviously, I'll make it clear for the Criminal Bar Association. We don't go into policies of of of funding on social care and how people should parent or not. But this is clearly a an increasingly personal view. And taking to the point, we all feel that unfortunately, the first time many people come against a limit of this is not acceptable is court, and that shouldn't be the place they learn it. That's what we all unfortunately deal with. It certainly keeps the courts busy. We just would like it to be less busy and have those limits brought in earlier.

Kate Kelleher:

But I I I think that's such a good point. You know, and that's it, that everybody is passing the blame, passing the buck, it's the school's fault, it's the parents' fault, it's somebody's fault. It's actually the social media, it's what we live in now. It's give it to me, give it to me now. Do not encourage me to actually think for myself, to analyse what I have done, what I may be doing, how it may impact other people. Just I don't have to read beyond the headline.

James Rossiter:

And the other thing that you touched on, Kate, is you know, those memories of meeting someone outside the bailey, collapsing against a wall. These are not the things you learn at law school, how to deal with the emotional impact pre-during and post-court. It's something you have to pick up, and perhaps increasingly so I sense, as you say, with a the shortages. Let's just give an example. The shortages and the demands of court, we do not have time to meet our clients often until five minutes before the trial starts. The solicitor may have only been instructed two days before for that first touring. We might be doing a return. We've been dumb booked, we're so overloaded. That we've got to build that relationship with the accused. Oh, absolutely.

Kate Kelleher:

Absolutely. We've got to try and build a relationship with the accused. But James makes a very good point, is that whereas before we would have those pressures of we've got a return, somebody's gone ill, is somebody's trial is overrun, and so we did pick up this trial, and so you do. But you would always be given some time in court once the judge became aware of that. But with the time constraints in court now, there is a pressure to be ready when the court is ready, because if you're not ready when the court is ready, your case may go off to two years' time.

James Rossiter:

Two years. It's not even two weeks, two years.

Kate Kelleher:

I have cases. It was an astounding joke back in March. I have two cases listed in 2027, and there's a clash in 2027 because because the court has listed them in the same week in 2027. I'm I'm afraid to go to the court and say, could one of you move the case by two or three weeks? Yeah because God only knows when I'm going to get, if I am getting 2027 as a listing now. They're not the more serious cases. Of course, the court is prioritizing sex offences, murders, child cases, but where somebody who says I have been robbed has to wait two years, and somebody who says, I didn't rob them, this is actually what happened, has to wait two years. There are two people out there in our society quietly seething.

Host:

Yeah.

James Rossiter:

I literally just on my way here to this podcast, um, it's something the day job dealing with funding. That's what is the job of the communication. It's not just dealing with the media, it's all the 90% of grunt work behind the scenes, consultation reports, and dealing help working with you know experts like Kate and many others who give their time voluntarily on top of their job to put submissions to government so we get funding, so we get things speedier. We're dealing with 2029 trial dates. 2029. So one was reported on Friday, listed in in inner London for December 2029, reportedly. I'd have no reason to distrust that Barrist and know him well. I physically went to Isleworth last Thursday, because a trial date that court it said the court can offer trial date 8th of October. On the very day we were dealing with a backlog, which is off the scale over 80,000, means nothing. But the trial date of 2029, 8th of October, I went there, and there it was. For a robbery uh uh carried out March this year, charge in August. That's pretty swift.

Kate Kelleher:

That's pretty quick.

James Rossiter:

And then to come back in October 2029. And I'm reading today that the standard understands that some barristers are refusing to take on cases which they suspect will be set down for trials in 2029. Of course, how many of us know where we're gonna be in 2027 or 2029?

Kate Kelleher:

I'm watching the TV at the moment, and I'm watching the ads saying it could be you. I don't know if I'm going to be around in 2029, it could be me. And I would be not in the courtroom.

James Rossiter:

Yeah, and it's that after the next election. We talked about trauma, defendants, complainants, and obviously the victims of crime, it's very important uh that we know they run in parallel, the victim, the defendant. But what if someone actually gets convicted? I think the public is beginning to hear more about the victim impact statement, something that's read out by someone who maybe uh may have suffered physical abuse or maybe the family of a deceased. What do you actually think a victim impact statement does from a justice point of view? And does it actually have a role in any trauma resolution? Is that even the right thing it should be doing?

Kate Kelleher:

Well, that's a that's an interesting question. Does it have any role in trauma resolution? Because if you take, for example, a murder, the murder will have happened some time ago. The trauma will have occurred at the time that a relative has been told that their child, son, father, sister, mother has been killed. And that is the point. And so, what do you do then with a victim impact statement? That follows through on what's gone on in the interim since hearing that news. And so that that will be flooded with memories, flooded with the fact that they will no longer see their child, their husband, their brother. But that would of itself be obvious in the trial to the judge who has heard these cases over and over again. It does give the family a chance to air it. But we see a lot where, for example, if we take a death by drink driving or death by dangerous driving, where a young man may kill his best friend in an accident because they're speeding. And we see victim impact statements there where the family plead on the court for leniency for those people who are about to face prison, you know, disqualification from driving for many years, requirements to take new tests, everything. But they are living with the fact that they've killed their best friend in a car accident.

James Rossiter:

So there's two things you're saying, it might allow a judge to play with the discretionary element they have, because there's obviously sentencing guidelines preventing them from too lenient to sentence and perhaps obliging them to a certain severe sentence, but there's a certain element of discretion, that's what you're saying. On the other hand, there's something it does psychologically.

Kate Kelleher:

I use the example of death by dangerous driving specifically because the Court of Appeal has been clear that the plea for leniency from a family of a deceased in that situation where one has killed a best friend or otherwise, is that it will be taken into account, but it will not affect sentencing because the law is clear on the sentence. And yet at the same time, when somebody is murdered, regardless of their character and previous bad character, they get an opportunity to extol the virtues of this deceased in what could be a warped situation, because that's also not going to impact the sentencing guidelines on murder where it is a mandatory life sentence, the tariff is such, and the mitigation is on the defendant. And so do they make an impact? I could be totally sarcastic and say they make an impact on me, and maybe that's because I'm hardened after 25 years at the bar. And I think, yes, we know somebody's dead, we know everybody is sad, and we are very sorry. How is this going to affect anybody else other than the person who has been traumatized 18 months previously by the news of the deceased, reliving it all and saying it? Some people choose to read out those statements in court, some people choose to read them from the public gallery, some people choose to go into the witness books, and others choose that the barrister reads them. And I have to say that those that choose to let the barrister read them are those that have the most impact on me, that they're not looking for a stage to lay further blame on somebody who has already been convicted. And so I have very mixed feelings on the impact of what are now called the victim personal statements. Yes. And so I I have a probably hardened view because the mitigation is there, the sentencing guidelines are there, the case laws there, you know, the mitigation is on the defendant.

James Rossiter:

Gosh, it is it is complex, isn't it? And the other query I have is we all carry so many images, cases, details, uh perhaps specific uh incidents in in in certain trials. How do you cope with them and and and is there such a thing as managing? I I just wonder.

Kate Kelleher:

Um not really, no. I think we develop um what is called the criminal sense of humour at the bar. Um but do I cope with it? I do for the most part, but I find myself getting more sad about the state of the world. And that I guess also when we are dealing with these cases and we are absorbing such horrific information and otherwise that we would like to be able to dump it and move on more quickly than we are, because we have to carry it now for two to three years. We have to remind ourselves of the case when it's called in for a pretrial review. We have to sit back down with the papers, refresh the memory, do all of these things in order to cope with the changing environment of the criminal justices.

James Rossiter:

Yeah, so managing is exactly that. We just manage, we just carry it on. In fact, that's one of the things I I people forget. There's a whole uh policy move of pre-recorded evidence for vulnerable witnesses extended from sexual offences to all manner of offences. And the idea being it saves the trauma for the complainant. We all know they actually have to stay with the trial, but what about us? We have to relive it.

Kate Kelleher:

We have to relive it every day. It's called in for a pretrial review before we get to trial.

James Rossiter:

It is uh and on that wonderful note, um, is that why we are loving our chocolates here? Is that about some good old-fashioned sugar?

Kate Kelleher:

But this is a very obvious example of a barrister's lunch there. We're just missing the crisps.

Host:

That was Trauma in the Courtroom, the first part of our two-part conversation with Kate Kelleher and James Rossiter. Next time, we'll continue this discussion by looking at the life of a barrister, the pressures behind the wig and gown, the long hours, and the human cost of holding justice together. You've been listening to Rebel Justice. If you'd like to support our work and receive four digital editions and one print issue a year, subscribe to TheView for just £20. Make sure to follow us on our social media. We're on Instagram @the_view_magazines. And you can also find us on LinkedIn, X, and TikTok. If you'd like to reach out to us directly, you can email inquiries to us at press@theview magazine.org. Please share this story.